


Reliquiae

by inwhatfurnace



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence, Dancing, Dismemberment, Fantasizing, First Kiss, Flirting, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, fantasized cannibalism and dismemberment as flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inwhatfurnace/pseuds/inwhatfurnace
Summary: “But I’d take part of you with me. One of the bones in your little finger. And every few years I’d come back and take one more piece.”“A pilgrim on an endless pilgrimage,” Hannibal says, voice breathy, expression enthralled.





	Reliquiae

**Author's Note:**

> I’m incredibly annoyed at myself for not watching this while it was airing and dealt with with my post-binge emptiness by writing the classic post-s3 fic.
> 
> To expand on the tags above, "canon-typical violence" is more of a stand-in for "canon-typical disturbing imagery." While the majority of it is fantasized, the cannibalism is both real and imagined.

This was one jump cut Will didn’t mind – it was easier, this way, ending everything on the edge of the cliff and then beginning again, skinny and battered but alive, in some little house in northwestern Pennsylvania that Hannibal, naturally, had set up years ago as a place to hunker down, just in case. It’s a dusty single-story bungalow and tastefully decorated, but as if by a middle-aged woman with a fondness for chickens instead of a socialite cannibal who wrings every drop of symbolism he can get out of his decor. That’s probably the point, and Will imagines a series of safehouses, each farther away and less like their true owner, until Hannibal’s nature is nested far within, once again impossible to reach.

The few memories he does have of in-between are syrupy and vague and very red: slumped in the back seat of a car, Chiyoh pressing keys into his hand and saying _end of the line_ ; packing the hole in Hannibal’s side with gauze; Hannibal sewing him shut; the two of them staring at each other as they lay in the house’s only bed, Hannibal doped up beyond sensation and Will not far behind.

But now that they’re both conscious, they have spent every waking moment licking their wounds and snapping at each other, two creatures trying to share a den in winter. Whatever god of blood and salt Will had offered them up to had spat them back out, and neither of them knew whether it was out of disgust or mercy. And now they must live with each other.

Will is testing the boundaries, a dog running the perimeter of an electric fence of his own design, somehow still surprised by the depth and breadth of his territory. He knows that Hannibal takes every day he stays as a victory. It’s only now that days have turned into weeks and their shallower cuts are finally starting to scab over, now that Will is mobile but remains, rankled but resolute, that Hannibal starts sleeping for more than a few hours a night.

Hannibal had held his vigils in the living room, as if to cut off any escape attempts at the front door, and Will had often found him there, dozing as the morning news droned on or as music softly crackled out of the old six-disc CD player. And that was where Will found him this evening, reading on the couch after another tense dinner.

“I’m tired,” he announces, and Hannibal snaps the book shut. “We won’t survive like this.”

They both know that this is the time they’re most likely to be caught – their wounds still visible to the outside world, neither of them completely comfortable with the other. They need more than what they have, they need – sublimation? Harmony? _Folie à deux_ , Alana offers from the past. _You need to make a place_ , Abigail says.

“You have a proposal for me.”

Will takes a step forward, scrubbing his hands over his face. “We can forgive all we want. Forgetting is harder. So how about we let everything just…” He waves a hand in the air, looking for a word. “Fossilize. Let time layer new things on top of it.”

Hannibal inclines his head, agreeable. Will nods, mirroring the motion, then takes a seat next to him.

“And I have a proposal for you,” Hannibal says, running a thumb over the book’s closed pages. “I would ask that if you decide to leave me again, you kill me before you do.”

Will pauses, watching Hannibal’s gaze turn to somewhere interior and far away.

“You mean it,” he replies, and Hannibal’s eyes focus again. “You don’t mean it in some romantic way.”

“Oh, I do,” Hannibal says, mouth twisting, “but literally, yes. I have been with and without you, Will, and should I find myself alive and without again? I would destroy us both, and plenty of other things besides.”

“Would you want me to eat you?”

Hannibal breathes in sharply, jaw working like he’s at a wine tasting. “Confit,” he decides. “It will keep for months. Longer, if you freeze it.”

“Is that what you would do to me, if I left? What you want to do to me?”

“Want?” Hannibal considers the tense with a tilt of his head. “I have wanted that. But now, I want you to be fed.”

If game tastes like what it eats, then Hannibal must be something entirely unique. Will can feel something hot and hungry squirm to life in the pit of his stomach, as if Hannibal had put that perfect piece of the Dragon’s throat in him too.

“I’ll be on the porch if you need me,” he says firmly, then stands up and walks away. He makes sure the screen door doesn’t slam behind him. He takes a seat on the porch swing and rocks back and forth, hoping the chill in the air will clean him out inside, freeze his greedy thoughts. He stares out at the woods that surround them, at the dirt driveway that eventually winds its way through it back to civilization. He sits there long enough for his breath to begin to fog as it leaves him, the sunset swallowed up by night behind the trees.

Hannibal offering himself up is something that deserves recognition, a response. Will imagines having one last dinner in their little house, then packing up pieces of Hannibal, submerged in his own fat, into little Tupperware containers.

The porch light turns on, followed by a rap on the screen door, and Will turns to find Hannibal opening it with his shoulder, a mug in each hand.

“Mexican hot chocolate,” he explains as he hands it over. Will takes a sip, raising his eyebrows as it washes hot down his throat but leaves the telltale taste of alcohol behind. “With an extra kick to warm you up.”

“It’s really good. Thanks.” One corner of Hannibal’s mouth turns up. He stares down into his cup and Will realizes that he’s _lingering_. “God, just,” he starts, exasperated, “c’mere,” and pats the seat next to him. Hannibal settles in, posture perfect. Will starts to rock again, gentle enough not to spill their drinks, and Hannibal goes with it, feet planted and ankles hinging. He clears his throat and feels Hannibal’s attention shift fully to him.

“I figured out what I’d do. If I found myself alone and without.”

“Oh?”

“I’d kill you and leave you here to rot. Tell no one what I’d done. Lock the doors and keep the keys.”

Hannibal shifts in his seat, closes his eyes. Will watches the flutter of movement just behind the lids. 

“Go on.”

“But I’d take part of you with me. One of the bones in your little finger. And every few years I’d come back and take one more piece.”

“A pilgrim on an endless pilgrimage,” Hannibal says, voice breathy, expression enthralled. Will lets himself imagine what Hannibal must see in his mind’s eye, behind the dark: Hannibal’s lifeless body on the bed. Will would carve a little box out of wood with just his hands and a whittling knife, then use the same knife to crack Hannibal’s finger at the third knuckle. He’d pull the nail off then peel the skin like a ripe piece of fruit, followed by the sinew and tendons, until only dull bone remained

The idea spirals out into two possible futures. The first: Will is never caught, and every day when he dresses, he tucks the box into a pocket, his coat or his jeans, and he walks out onto the streets of some city, one small bit of Hannibal pressed to him. He’d carry the knife around too, if he was feeling sentimental.

The second: Will is caught, eventually, checking into some nondescript hotel, busted by some concierge who follows the FBI’s Most Wanted list too closely. He’s on his knees in his room; an agent cuffs his hands behind his back, five more keep their guns trained on him. Jack Crawford himself pats Will down, not trusting anyone else to, and finds the box in his back pocket. They find more in his suitcase, along with the knife. They send it all to the lab for testing, and the nauseous-looking intern who’s been given the honor of bringing Jack the results says: _it’s all pieces of Hannibal Lecter, sir._

Will lets his voice draw Hannibal back from quickening stream of time. He stops rocking.

“And when my end was near, I’d come back one last time and lay down next to you. Maybe no one would ever find us.”

“Why, Will.” Hannibal has opened his eyes. The light reflected there is bright and fathomless. “That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

He snorts. “The bar isn’t that high.”

“It is now.”

Will is struck by a deep and certain sense that his offering wasn’t enough; they’re not even. Not yet. He leans over to set his mug down, takes Hannibal’s from his hands and does the same with it. As he begins to twist his wedding ring off his finger, Hannibal remains still and rapt, eyes darting back and forth between Will’s hands and his face.

“Here,” he says, and a circle of gold falls into Hannibal’s open palm. “Do whatever you want.”

Hannibal holds the ring up for inspection, letting it catch the dying light. It needs a good polish. There’s no inscription, no inlay, nothing to make it any more or any less than a standard wedding ring from a standard department store. He watches Hannibal try the band on the ring finger of his own left hand, frowning when it doesn’t fit.

“Asshole,” Will mutters, a grin pulling at his mouth. Hannibal gives him a toothy smile and moves the ring onto his little finger. There’s an unasked question there. “Don’t worry,” Will tells him. “You got me. And I got you.”

Hannibal slips the ring off and pockets it. Will knows he’ll never see it again.

* * *

Will gauges Hannibal’s health and mood by what he cooks for dinner. They’ve settled into a routine: one day one of them will cook breakfast and dinner, the other lunch, the next they switch off. He’d let himself be a little smug when he discovered that a half-dead Hannibal Lecter’s repertoire wasn’t far from his own: eggs over easy, grilled cheese, French toast, buttered egg noodles, vegetable stir fry, even mashed potatoes from a box. It had still been some of the best food Will had ever eaten.

He surveys the ingredients that are neatly arranged on the kitchen counter, all at right angles to each other. “Puff pastry? Now I know you’re feeling better.”

Hannibal smirks, genuinely amused. “ _Bouchée à la reine_. Still a simple dish.”

Will decides to ride on the wave of his good humor. “There’s something I want. It’s a bad idea.” He exhales. “I want it anyway.”

“Try me.”

“Bedelia asked me question during one of our conversations. I think she deserves an answer.”

Hannibal considers this as he chops an onion. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Hannibal scrapes the onion off the cutting board and into the pan on the stove, where butter begins to hiss and crackle. It smells fantastic. “It’ll be some time before it’s safe to move, especially anywhere near Baltimore.”

“I can be patient,” Will replies, and Hannibal smiles as he adds the meat to the pan.

“May I ask what she asked you?”

Will drums his fingers against the counter and waits for Hannibal to turn back to him. “Nothing neither of us doesn’t know already.”

* * *

`THREE YEARS LATER: BALTIMORE, MARYLAND`

He’s kneeling to hook Bedelia up to the IV when she reaches up. Will lets her move, lets her hand come to rest on his arm. She stares at him intently. “Through me the way into the suffering city,” she says, words slow and careful.

“ _Per me si va ne la città dolente_. How considerate of you, Bedelia.” Hannibal doesn’t look up from the other side of the table, where he’s folding napkins. “Do you find yourself at the mouth of Hell, Will?”

Bedelia’s eyes slide over to Hannibal, then roll back to Will. 

“Thank you,” Will tells her, and finds he means it. He puts his hand over hers. “But I went through the gate a while ago.”

“I see.” She sighs, lips curving into a conspiratorial smile. “And are you still aching, Mr. Graham?”

He laughs and slips the needle under her skin. “Start counting backwards from ten.”

* * *

Dinner is followed by dessert, then shots of limoncello. When they both get up to leave, politely pushing in their chairs, Bedelia stares at them, bright new horror dawning across the landscape of her face. 

“How was I?”

“Remarkably sophisticated,” Hannibal assures her, “and full of promise. A few more years and you’ll be even more exquisite.” He turns, pressing his hand on the small of Will’s back as he passes by, leaving the room.

Bedelia looks down at her untouched plate as if it had suddenly appeared in front of her: oysters and acorns. She swallows and raises her head. “I imagine my punishment fits my crime."

Will shrugs. “You tried to prolong the inevitable. This will be prolonged.”

Hannibal returns with both of their coats draped over his arm. He helps Will into his before putting on his own. "Are we ready?"

“Ready or not,” Bedelia whispers.

“Thanks for your hospitality," Will says, and grins at her unimpressed glare. “Till next time.”

“Thank you for a wonderful evening, my dear.” 

Will catches a glint of metal peeking out from underneath the napkin on Bedelia’s lap as Hannibal leans down to kiss her cheek. He buttons his coat and waits to see what happens.

* * *

There are things they should be doing, once they get home: packing, scrubbing the house down, making it all look as though no one had ever lived there. Bedelia had caught Hannibal in the face with an oyster fork, the tines pressing two little dots into the curve of his cheekbone. The cuts aren’t that deep but need to be cleaned all the same.

They’d left her house as a parting gift, wrapped in paper and topped with a bow: fingerprints, hair, footprints, blood, Bedelia’s leg glazed like a Christmas ham, their host still at the head of the table. It hadn’t felt like Hell at all, which is something that needs to be said, but they need to go. Instead, once Will’s thrown his coat and shoes in the hall closet, Hannibal touches his arm and tilts his head towards the living room.

“What are we doing?” Will asks, hesitant as Hannibal’s hand slips into his, but he lets himself be dragged in.

“Dancing, I hope.”

Will huffs out a laugh. “Just as a warning, I don’t think I ever graduated beyond the middle-school shuffle.”

Hannibal’s gaze is warm and indulgent. “I’ll lead, then.” He places one of Will’s hands on his shoulder and keeps the other held tight, then wraps an arm around Will’s back.

It turns out to be nothing complicated – they sway back and forth, Hannibal keeping time with a hum that turns into the barest beginnings of singing. He can undoubtedly carry a tune, but the little wavers and cracks in his voice are impossibly endearing. It’s some waltz with words that sound like German; it starts out simple but soon turns more complex.

Will watches their merged shadow on the floor, a wavering, lumbering thing with clasped hands.

Hannibal’s voice fades off, having reached some resolution that pleases him, and Will figures it’s as good a time as any. He leans in and places a kiss to one corner of Hannibal’s mouth, then the other. He pulls back to appraise his handiwork. They’ve stopped moving and are now just holding onto each other. Will’s pretty sure two barely-kisses don’t warrant it, but Hannibal’s expression is beatific, a man who has travelled far to reach the highest altar of the truest church.

“In some regions of France,” Hannibal murmurs, eyes wet, “it’s customary to give three kisses. Sometimes four.”

Will put his forehead to Hannibal’s shoulder and laughs, his own shoulders shaking. He feels Hannibal’s hand on his back start to roam, palm smoothing down the fabric of his shirt. Here it is, another layer of silt on top of the decaying remains of everything they’ve done to each other. He lifts his head and gives Hannibal his third kiss.

* * *

`FOUR YEARS LATER: PARIS, FRANCE`

“Saint Louis built Sainte-Chapelle to house his collection of relics.” Hannibal keeps his voice low, smiling as Will turns in a slow circle next to him, neck craned. “It’s a reliquary inverted – extraordinary beauty found within instead of without.”

Will squints at him, then turns his mouth up into his best shit-eating grin. “If you wanted to tell me I’m pretty on the inside, you didn’t have to come up with some fancy French metaphor.”

Hannibal lets out a long-suffering sigh and continues. He and Will discuss the history of _l’île de la Cité_ ; the reign of Louis IX; the chapel's Gothic architecture; the restoration efforts after the revolution. By the time they’re done they’ve amassed a small group of English-speaking tourists around them, who nod in thanks and disperse once they realize their impromptu guides have nothing left to say. Will keeps a straight face but catches his eye; Hannibal is sure he’ll come up with some snappy name for a cannibal travel agency momentarily.

It’s a beautiful day outside, and now that he lets himself simply look, the pure quality of light filtered through stained glass is enough to bring tears to Hannibal’s eyes, let alone the sight of the man beside him awash in it. It is easy to make space for this place and moment in his memory palace. But instead of Christ’s, the relics stored here will be his own, cut away from the body by his only and best apostle, whom he worships in turn –

“Hey,” Will murmurs, and Hannibal feels dull pain and sweet pressure as he pinches the little finger of Hannibal’s left hand. “Don’t go too far without me.”

“Never,” he promises. The idea is absurd.

**Author's Note:**

> Bedelia and Hannibal quote [the first line of Canto III of _Inferno_](https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-3/).
> 
> I tried to find something good for Hannibal to be humming and went with [Brahms’s _Liebeslieder Walzer_](https://youtu.be/IKkEyeMSoXw) because he’s a big pretentious sap. 
> 
> You can find an interactive panorama of Sainte-Chapelle [here](http://cuicui.be/france-paris-sainte-chapelle/).
> 
> I also read [Stevie Smith’s “God the Eater”](http://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/smith/GodtheEater.html) like fifty times while writing this, which is a _little_ on the nose for cannibal romance but hey.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! You can find me at all the usual places: [twitter](https://twitter.com/amyrran), [tumblr](http://aetheling.tumblr.com/), and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/aetheling).


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